Sewing

Organise for Autumn Sewing Now

Is the first week in September, your real New Year? I’s mine! Between school/university aged-children, and the change in season, I think of it as the beginning of the new year.

I’m refining my autumn palette and planning my sewing (read more about this in my Wardrobe Architect posts). I will not buy any RTW clothes this year and I want to be more thoughtful about bringing new fabric into my life. This is the perfect time to evaluate my stash and organise my autumn sewing. Here is what I do.

Organise the Autumn Stash

  • Clear-out remnants: keep any that are useful for bias binding, bag-making or quilting. The rest are recycled.
  • Clear-out old works in progress. Time to either fix them or scrap them.
  • Clear-out lengths of fabric that won’t be used. I have some impulse purchases that aren’t me. If I can’t use them in a toile, they’re gone.
  • Move summer weight fabrics to the least accessible place in my stash.
  • Bring autumn fabrics, that are in my seasonal palette, into my sewing room.
  • Tidy-up and organise interfacings. All my interfacings are now rolled onto little tubes (saved from paper towel and wrapping paper), rather than folded. No more creases. Each is wrapped with a label,that tells me what it is.
  • Sort old toiles. Recycle if not useful.
  • Photograph all fabrics (on my phone) and list in Evernote. I use the app Evernote and a file I call “sewing inventory”, to keep track of my stash and sewing patterns.

Treasures

This is a big job that creates a lot of mess and chaos while it’s going on. I want to really cut out the clutter. But sometimes, clearing-out rewards with treasures.

Look at this Designers Guild cut-velvet remnant that I found.

velvet upholstery fabric

It fits perfectly with my autumn palette. I love the bags that I made in the Spring; they brought so much extra zing to my wardrobe. I want a tote for Autumn. This fabric is perfect ~ it’s strong and I love the colours and textures. I plan to make a sling shape, with fabric handles, like this, from Plumo.

sling bag

I may even make it in panels, like this one. I can use the dramatic velvet nap in different directions to get more texture.

Do you find it hard to clear-out your stash? I’ll be offering recycling fabric solutions in my first bi-weekly newsletter. Sign-up if you are interested!

 

6 thoughts on “Organise for Autumn Sewing Now

  1. I am with you on not buying any RTW clothes going forward.Also determined to ONLY wear clothes that “spark joy” !

    1. My stash is in many places. I think I will take some pictures of the areas that are neatly organised. I have filled 2 big garbage bags with fabric so far. I was also reviewing my quilting stash. I know I will want to do more at some point but I can see how this would be a way of collecting crazy amounts of stuff.

  2. Clearing out and organizing seasonally is a great idea. I used to do it faithfully once a year in January but have gotten very lax about that so now I am drowning in fabric and patterns. I recently did a quick purge by just pulling out stuff I could see that was obviously not useful to me anymore. But I really need to take each piece out and do a more thorough assessment. I donate mine to Scrap, which is a non-profit thrift store that only sells arts, crafts and sewing supplies. I took several boxes to them at the beginning of the summer. They will probably get several more when I do my new year purge. I did categorize and organize my patterns a few weeks ago. They filled up four large dresser drawers!

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